Tag: shares

The markets were all tutting over Twitter founder Ev Williams deciding to flog a third of his shares.

Apparently, Williams did not want to get rid of his shares because the company was suffering, he just wanted to buy something nice for himself.

In fact, his announcement make it clear that he was not selling because of Twitter performance reasons, just for personal reasons.

Of course, a cynic would suggest that those personal reasons could be that he does not want to lose more money on a company which could not successfully sell itself.

If he wants to buy anything more than a mars bar and a packet of crisps with his shares then he might have to do it now. Williams is the company’s largest individual shareholder, so his recent announcement may make some investors worried. However, Twitter stock was only down less than one percent Thursday following this news. Recode reports:

Twitter’s stock is down more than 15 percent over the past three months. Williams explained the sale in a blog post, and wrote that he has spent a lot of money investing through his venture fund, Obvious Ventures, and also donated a lot to charity and political campaigns over the past year.

“I’d like to continue,” he added. Williams sold about $4 million in stock this week, according to an SEC filing, and has set up a 10b5-1 trading plan, which means he will sell at pre-determined dates moving forward to avoid any concerns over insider trading.

Beancounters working for Barrons have added up the numbers and divided them by their shoe size and decided that Intel will grow like topsy next year.

Barron’s claims that Chipzilla’s shift to higher-growth businesses such as server chips and embedded chips for cars could drive a 25 increase in its shares in a year.

While there is a risk Intel could cut its financial guidance for the year when the chipmaker reports earnings on Tuesday, it is likely to return to sustainable growth by year’s end for the first time in seven years, the publication said.

Those who do not own shares in Chipzilla should wait until after the earnings call to buy shares, it added.

Intel has had a pants few years as demand for personal computer chips has dried up, Barron’s said, but growth in the company’s data centre group, which includes server chips, could eventually bring in more revenues.

The gap between the two businesses has closed over the past five years.

Last year, the data centre business’s operating profit was $7.8 billion, slightly below the $8.2 billion earned by Intel’s client computing division, which includes chips for desktop and notebook computers. In 2010, the data center division brought in just $4.4 billion, compared to the personal computer business’s $13 billion.

Meanwhile, the company’s Internet of Things division, which includes chips for cars, medical devices and factories, composed just four percent of revenue last year but is growing.

Troubled search outfit Yahoo is exploring the sale of $1 billion to $3 billion of patents, property and other “non-core assets”.

Yahoo chief financial officer Ken Goldman told the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference that a committee created to explore alternatives to the company’s plan to spin off its core business is looking at quick sales of assets.

Goldman said patents, land, property and “non-core units or businesses” are all on the table for potential sale, and the company has sold or licensed more than $600 million in patents over the last three years.

Yahoo faces increasing pressure from shareholders and investors to sell its core business instead of going through a spinoff that would separate the company from its multibillion-dollar stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group Holding.

Time, Verizon Communications and several other suitors have emerged as potential buyers.

Goldman did not confirm the reports but said the committee is “aligned to see what best creates shareholder value.”

In the middle of the Christmas shopping, expensive electronic gadgets like GoPro and Apple watches were being ignored, despite discounting.

Five of the six consumer electronics shares in the Russell 3000, including camera maker GoPro, headphone maker Skullcandy and GPS maker Garmin were down. Apple shares have also been suffering.

According to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ, the gadget makers are down on average by 21 percent. In fact the only one doing well is an outfit called ZAGG which makes coatings to help people protect the screens of devices they already own. ZAGG shares are up 61 percent this year.

Apple and Fitbit have been adding features to their products to keep up interest but it does not appear to have worked. Shares of Fitbit are essentially flat from their first day of trading following the June initial public offering and down 44 percent from its high this year. Apple, too, has snapped its winning streak for investors and is now down three percent at the end of the year.

GoPro fell 71 percent this year as just about everyone who wanted a camera to record their extreme sports escapades has one. The company’s revenue growth over the past 12 months is still a respectable 62 percent, but that’s well below the 263 percent growth in 2011. The future is the more troubling part. Analysts are now expecting GoPro’s revenue to gain just 11.6 percent in 2016.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by flogging off a big chunk of his shares.

According to a SEC filing on Nov. 04. Krzanich sold 35,000 shares at an average price of $34 each. The total value of the transactions was $1.2 million.
In the last 30 days, Krzanich also sold 35,000 shares valued at $1.06 million.

This is major insider selling, especially from the CEO. These sales have lowered Krzanich’s stake in Intel to 0.01% of the chip maker’s total market capitalisation.

He is not the only Intel executive trying to shift a lot of shares. Renee James sold 3,602 shares at an average price of $34.76 on October 26 in a transaction worth $125,206. Gregory Pearson sold off $51,472 worth and Andy Bryant sold $772,968.

All this is surprising. Most analysts consider Intel worth holding onto. UBS analysts think the stock is worth buying. This is mostly because Chipzilla has been doing better than Wall Street expected. One has to wonder if the executives know something we don’t.

The console maker with a toilet fixation has seen its shares plummet after delaying a move to offer its games on mobile phones.

Nintendo, the maker of much Wii, has ignored calls to put its games onto mobile phones for ages. Then after it changed its mind and set an early 2016 date for the launch, it saw its shareholders get excited.

Now the outfit has pushed the launch of the games a few months to March 2016, disappointing gaming fans as well as investors who drove its shares down by more than 10 percent.

Fans and investors had hoped it would include its best-selling videogame franchise Mario in the first lineup.

Chief Executive Tatsumi Kimishima said the delay would help Nintendo concentrate on selling its existing consoles and game software during the year-end holiday season.

“The year-end is traditionally our peak season for sales. This way, we’d be able to introduce our new applications after the holiday season is over.”

He did not say if Mario would come to smartphones, instead introducing a new social networking service-style application called “Miitomo” which would be available in March.

Although shareholders and gamers want Nintendo to put its catalogue onto mobiles there are some fears that its traditional reluctance are justified. If done incorrectly Nintendo could cannibalise traditional console sales.

Nintendo reported a weaker than expected operating profit for the July-September quarter on tepid sales of game software, apparently. Tepid. Now that’s a word and a half.

The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street have been consulting their tarot cards and are predicting a huge fall in the price of Apple shares.

For years Apple shares have grown on the basis that it will come up with new ideas and enter new markets. However the fear is that neither is happening.

Apple is about to release numbers, and there are fears that an earnings miss will really punish its shares. Numbers predicted will be a 20 percent fall, which is a drop similar to the one it suffered early this summer.

Part of the problem is that analysts have historically talked up Apple and they have been setting targets which are nearly impossible. Revenue estimates are close to $53 billion To make matters worse, Wall Street expects it to “beat its numbers”.

The Apple earnings this quarter will be based on two numbers. The first is sales of its flagship product, the iPhone. The second is China sales. Apple management has already said that Apple needs to have impressive Chinese sales to move overall revenue forward. In the July quarter (the one released just prior to the current release), Apple revenue in China rose 112 per cent to $13.2 billion, and was 27 per cent of the quarter’s total.

The iPhone 6S is a sticking point. It is widely seen as dated and already the hype is building for the iPhone 7. Apple managed to convince the world that it was selling well on its opening days by launching in China and the US at the same time to give the impression sales were up. Anyone with a calculator saw through that cunning plan.

China sales are expected to fall anyway due to the slowing economy which means Jobs’ Mob would have to make up sales by taking them away from rivals.

This is something less likely to happen on any great scale.

Apple is on the edge. In theory it should not be doing as well has it has. Other technology companies have been seeing revenue gains on the cloud while traditional smartphone and PC sales have slumped.

The company has been largely propped up by the hype it has received from its allies in the press. But without killer technology or sales, it is unlikely that the markets will continue

The hoax appeared on a forged website found at bloomberg.market with a post designed to look exactly like a Bloomberg article.

The fake news story keyed into one possible scenario for Twitter causing some investors to believe it had received an actual buyout bid. Twitter’s current market value is just under $25 billion so $31 billion was a good deal.

Bloomberg News tweeted that the news was a fake and that the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into possible criminal activity.

It somewhat sulkily pointed out that it would never run a headline like that, particularly if the source was unattributed. The fake story also spelt a name wrong and the intro did not describe what Twitter is (a social media company) as pure decrees of the style book dictate. Of course few people know what a first paragraph is supposed to contain.

Meanwhile someone is counting money from their cashed in Twitter shares. We just hope they covered their tracks well.

The Tame Apple press is desperately searching for scapegoats as the share price in Jobs’ Mob plummeted like a free falling skydiving team of elephants.

It is inconceivable that the shares should take a tumble after it was reported that sales of Apple’s flagship iWatch had fallen by 90 percent, so the Tame Apple Press decided to blame China.

The Chinese share market is suffering from a bad case of burst bubble and the Tame Apple Press logically felt that since China is a key market for iPhones the company would suffer.

While that is true, many analysts in China had been suggesting that sales of expensive smartphones in China were slumping anyway and Apple was about to get a sales shock.

Apple shares were down two percent at $120.15 in afternoon trade and have lost about four percent since July 1.

Some investors fear that the turmoil could hurt consumer demand and the Chinese economy as a whole, after all it is impossible that the shine could go off Apple. Apple’s favourite press agency Reuters quoted FBR analyst Daniel Ives as saying that China was poised to be Apple’s “high-octane fuel for the next few years, especially for iPhones” Given a lot of the dark clouds we are seeing in China, that has spooked investors, he claimed.

Of course it was nothing to do with the Slice Intelligence that sales of the Apple Watch have dropped since its launch in April and the fact the product has not seen any significant boost for profits.

One of the big difficulties here is that independent analysts and journalists who have not sold their credibility by advertising for Apple can’t get their hands on data to tell what is really going on.

If Apple was seeing a crash in iPhones in China and a general iWatch product failure, that would be enough in its own right to cause shares to fall. If the problem is being caused by the Chinese share market then why are all the stories about how it will affect Apple?